Hyderabad: Apartments with smart water meters can save up to 35 per cent of water on a monthly basis. Most of the people do not realise that unlike electricity there are no alternative sources of water. No new water source was ever found. Without water metering, there is no incentive for anyone to save water. Research has proven that the water consumption drops by up to 35 per cent once metering begins.

Most housing complexes do not meter the water consumption of residents, individually. Instead, the residents are charged a fixed flat rate. The individual consumptions are never equal which results in most residents paying for others’ consumption as well. This makes people insensitive towards water wastage in their homes.

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Vivek Shukla, co-founder, SmarterHomes, “Current status of water availability in cities such as Hyderabad is grim with severe water scarcity (experienced more during summers), year after year. With an increasing consumption, water is a fast-diminishing natural resource. The imbalance of availability and demand leads to disputes. Water crisis in cities is increasing at an alarming rate. For people living in high rise apartments, water comes at a huge cost. It not only includes the cost of purchase of water from water tankers but also the cost of pumping it up to the overhead tanks.”

Vivek Shukla and Kasturi Rangan MR, founders of Bengaluru-based SmarterHomes have come out with WaterOn, a smart meter that measures water consumption in individual apartments. The company, which saw installations of 1,500 meters between mid-2014 and March 2017, has created an order book of 6,000 meters in the last six months, which speaks of metering adoption picking up. The company has a sales pipeline for 85,000 meters in Hyderabad alone.

SmarterHomes with the help of its data management platform is providing end-to-end solutions in this space. It is planning to serve water meter markets in Delhi and NCR soon and also diversify into metering diesel generator sets in the near term.

Vivek Shukla says, “The metering culture is just picking up. In South, we are seeing more installations happening in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai. However, India is still an un-served market as at least 10 million apartments are yet to go for metering. As the nation creates more smart cities and people build and live in more smart homes, there is a need for enhanced adoption of water meters.” He adds, “One of the major benefits that smart meters bring to any apartment or a building s detecting water leaks. Not just residential, water meters will help track water usage practices in commercial, retail and other buildings as well.